Particle Mesh will ship in October

Hello everyone!

My name is Will Hart. I’m a General Manager at Particle responsible for leading our investment in new wireless technologies like Mesh networking and LTE M1.

Today we sent an email to all of our preorder customers to inform them that there have been delays during hardware development. Particle Mesh hardware will now ship in October 2018.

I understand that this is disappointing news to many of you who are anxiously awaiting your Particle Mesh hardware. We have been working very hard to make a September delivery date possible but encountered several unexpected delays in development that have made that impossible.

Openness is one of our core values at Particle, and it also is the purpose of this post. I want to provide to you a glimpse behind the corporate curtain and share some of the challenges that have led to this delay. I also want to share some of the triumphs we’ve achieved since the announcement of the new generation of hardware in February.

If you have any questions about the update below, I encourage you to ask them here in the forums or by visiting our support portal.

Where we are today

According to our delivery plan, we should be in the middle of mass production for the Argon, and completing mass production for the Boron by the end of the month.

Today, we’re wrapping up mass production for the Xenon and preparing to start mass production for the Argon, which puts us 4 weeks behind schedule.

Although we’re disappointed to share this delay with you, we’re incredibly excited about the product that we’ve built, and have achieved the following milestones that will de-risk the remainder of the product development process:

All hardware is locked down

All hardware design files for seven new Particle products are final, and PCBs (Printed Circuit Boards) for mass production ordered.

The Boron, the last design to be completed, is the most complex piece of hardware that we’ve designed to date — it’s a densely routed, 8-layer masterpiece of a board with an MCU and two radios all packed into a tiny Feather form factor.

Stress testing completed

We have conducted more hardware, environmental, and RF stress testing for Particle Mesh than any previous generation of Particle hardware. This testing has allowed us to push the boundaries of what is possible for embedded mesh networking systems and to discover additional opportunities to improve the performance of our new hardware.

Pretesting complete, certifications underway

FCC and FCC-equivalent pretesting has been successfully completed for all our new hardware SKUs, it’s one of the most important milestones in the process. All of our new hardware passed with flying colors, making our third generation of hardware the most performant as well as the most complicated dev kits yet.

Xenon, accessories in mass production

The Xenon as well as the Debugger, Classic Accessory Adapter, and Ethernet FeatherWing, have all entered mass production.

Photos of the first Xenon units off the line are included below — notice the data matrix codes that will be affixed to every Particle Mesh device to simply setup and device configuration!

Causes of delay

I shared above that delays in the development process have continued to put pressure on our September delivery date, and wanted to share some of the interesting problems we’ve had to overcome to make Particle Mesh possible.

LTE M1 network readiness

The Boron is built with LTE M1, the newest cellular protocol for IoT devices. Many of the new features that make it compelling for IoT applications – like eDRX low power and extended coverage modes – are still being rolled out by carriers. To ensure that our customers’ devices can take advantage of these new features when they become available, we’ve brought our industry-leading OTA firmware update platform to LTE M1.

In final device testing, however, we discovered some quirks in the connection stability with individual towers on the network, which was interfering with the consistency of OTA updates in different geographic regions. As a result of these new challenges, we’ve improved our OTA update protocol and made it more resistant to lossy network behavior.

Evolving vendor SDKs

Particle Mesh is using two brand new chipsets — the Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 mesh and Bluetooth combo chip and the Qualcomm MDM9206, an LTE M1/NB1 chipset — that have only been deployed by a very small number of companies. One of the challenges of working with these new chipsets is the evolving software support within the vendor SDKs that make development possible.

We discovered throughout the course of implementation that several basic features, like the USB peripheral for the nRF52840 and flow control for the MDM9206 (u-blox module), were either not implemented or not reliable. Through partnerships with these companies, we were able to resolve these blockers, but it taught us that even baseline functionality for cutting-edge hardware cannot be assumed.

Certification readiness

Because LTE M1 is a brand new wireless specification, the certification body (called CTIA) that defines the certification criteria for this new class of hardware is still working to finalize a critical test – the OTA (“over the air”) testing standard for LTE M1. This test is a required approval of our carrier certifications for the Boron and a key requirement for fulfilling all preorders. We are working closely with the CTIA to expedite our certification by testing against draft standards of the test, which has required our testing partners to procure and install new testing equipment just for this task.

Exciting accomplishments

Though there have been some setbacks during development, there have also been some exciting triumphs. Each new generation of Particle hardware bites off more and more complexity than the previous. Particle Mesh is no exception.

Bluetooth-based Thread commissioning

Our iOS and Android apps will be the first implementations that we’re aware of to include Bluetooth-based Thread network commissioning (all Thread commissioning standards assume Wi-Fi and Thread onboard). This has essentially meant inventing our own Bluetooth setup protocol that allows for the initial setup of Mesh network over Bluetooth as well as the ability to commission new endpoints onto existing mesh networks via Bluetooth. This has never been done before, and we expect it to radically simplify the simplicity with which these kinds of networks can be created and maintained over time.

The video below demonstrates an early demonstration of this process (with a proof-of-concept app design).

Secure Bluetooth authentication and pairing

Security is a cornerstone of the Particle platform, and Bluetooth is the newest protocol that we’ve added to our portfolio. Although encryption for Bluetooth data streams already exists as an optional feature, Bluetooth authentication is not a secure process or part of the specification, as it was originally intended for peripherals like keyboards and mice.

Since we’re using Bluetooth for critical tasks like network commissioning and device diagnostics, we improved on the Bluetooth standard by porting Mbed TLS, an encryption library in C, to our Android and iOS apps to facilitate secure authentication.

Embedded border routers with OpenThread

A third milestone that we’ve achieved is becoming the first company to implement OpenThread’s gateway functionality on an embedded microcontroller device.

Previously, all OpenThread gateways have been implemented on devices running Linux with significantly more powerful processors and additional flash/RAM. As I mentioned above, we have been able to do so with impressive network performance, making Particle the first end-to-end Thread development platform and by far the cheapest and most accessible tools for developing Thread-based applications. This is only possible because of this engineering feat, which we are contributing back to the OpenThread community via our open source Device OS.

What happens next

With most of the highest risk milestones behind us, the rest of the development process should be relatively straightforward.

Manufacturing continues for the Xenon and will kick off for the Argon and Boron soon

Hardware will be tested in our contract manufacturing facility in Shenzhen and packaged

All finished goods will be sent from our facilities in China to our logistics warehouse

Over a period of two weeks, we’ll fulfill all 30,000+ device preorders and make the product available for purchase in our retail store for immediate fulfillment

In the spirit of openness, we’re committed to providing you as much transparency into our development process as possible. If you have questions, please feel free to ask here in the forums or reach out to our developer support team by visiting our support portal.

There is too much at risk with this new Particle Mesh to NOT get it right before it ships. I’ve seen first hand how hard the Particle folks are working to get it done right. The delay is a bummer but for me, having it right is better than just having it. Thanks for the frank update and the cool pics @will

I’ll chime in too… FANTASTIC JOB to the Particle Team. Anyone that develops understands that best guessing will never reflect the real world challenges one experiences in the transition from prototype to product.

Having said that, is there any possibility of getting a Xenon only “partial” shipment? We have a white-hot initiative that would really benefit from a Xenon board operating as a BLE-only broker with additional peripherals. To date, I’ve got a POC using the Duo and having a genuine Xenon article (even non-production or first-article production for our dev work) would be tremendously beneficial to our cause.

Hi!
I’d like to thank you for the great products you have created there and as I’m using them “only” for self-educational and tinkering means I still believe it’s better to have a 1.0 product out than an alpha or beta like so many others do.
Keep up the great work!
P.S.: could you elaborate which USB powering device you used for powering all the devices in the picture near the end?

Is there any sample code, videos or documentation we can start reading up on to find out how it all works , and maybe a product matrix that shows us whats needed where, its a bit bewildering! I have just mastered and Particle photons talking to each over Wifi , so I need a “particle mesh for dummies” video !

@will
Would you help us interpret the new language that just appeared on the mesh preorder thermometer? The way it reads now sounds like the 35,000 devices (aka second run) previously advertised as being manufactured and available to ship in October (previously Sep, Aug…) is now delayed until November.

I got an email today stating that Mesh preorders will ship in October, so if you are in the preorder that is coming soon. If you are ordering right now, I think your order will likely be shipped in November.

Thanks @bko. We received the same email, however notice the email does not say “will ship in October”, it says “shipping begins in October”. The email combined with the update to the preorder thermometer language is what prompted our concern and request for an update from @will. Our intent is solely to get a clear, candid answer on timing as the way the messaging sits today, it allows for a ship date as far out as November 30.

Hi @SmartWorld. I wrote that email myself, my apologies for any confusion it might have caused. Everyone who placed their order before yesterday, September, 26th, will receive it in October. Anyone who placed the order on or after 9/26 will receive it in November.

If you’d like I can take a look at your specific order and see if there’s any further detail I can give based on what’s in there. Just send me an email - joseph@particle.io - with some information and I can see what we can find.

Let me know if that all makes sense, I want to be as clear and candid as possible.